• Articles,  Build It Yourself,  Kayaks

    Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Two

    Subscribe to Blog via Email Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address Subscribe In the last installment of Building a Perfect Kayak, I laid out the design criteria for my new kayak and ran into some software problems. Mainly, with the software that I’m using, I couldn’t export rounded stations to build the forms for the kayak. Because Hulls, the boat design program I used, is made to produce plywood panels, it lacked the features needed to accomplish these rounded stations, so I downloaded and tried a program called Sketch-Up. Kayak Forms First, for those readers that haven’t…

  • Articles,  Build It Yourself,  Kayaks

    Building a Perfect Kayak: Part Three

    If you remember from the previous article, I had just figured out a way to output forms from Hulls by using an extra chine above the design of the kayak. This extra chine gave me a common point in all the forms, and with the click of two buttons provided me with perfectly aligned offsets to plot on paper (albeit paper which looks like a brown paper bag, because I’m unable to buy white roll or tracing paper in Grand Marais, MN. I can’t wait to see my wood choices or maybe wood choice. Pine looks okay, right?) After I figured this out, I charted the Righting/Heeling Moments for the…